From the front lines of welfare reform: an analysis of social worker and welfare recipient attitudes

Social workers and welfare recipients operate within the same institutional framework and share a working and/or lived knowledge of poverty, but they occupy different social and economic positions. To gain a better understanding of intergroup attitudes, the author compared how social workers and welfare recipients explain poverty and perceive the welfare system. The results highlight important similarities and differences between the two groups. Although the author did not find differences for individualistic attributions, welfare recipients regarded prejudice as playing a greater role in causing poverty than did social workers. Welfare recipients also expressed stronger support for increased welfare funding and progressive welfare policies than did social workers. The author discussed implications for strengthening interclass alliances, particularly the relationship between social service providers and welfare recipients.     

A Test of the Tripartite Model of Anxiety and Depression in Elementary and High School Boys and Girls

The applicability of the tripartite model of emotion, which distinguishes the shared aspect of depression and anxiety, negative affect (NA), from their respective specific components of low positive affect (PA) and physiological hyperarousal (PH), was examined in 472 elementary and high school students. The relations among depression, anxiety, and the three tripartite dimensions were examined for the total sample and across four subgroups based on age and gender. High school girls reported more depression, anxiety, NA, and PH than the other groups, and lower PA as assessed by the PANAS-C, but not the AFARS. Using structural equation modeling, the tripartite model proved to be a reasonably good fit for the total sample. Among the subgroups, the best fit was found for high school girls. However, several findings for the total sample and for individual subgroups were not consistent with the tripartite model, raising issues related to the independence and specificity of the tripartite constructs and their measurement. Alternative age- and gender-specific models to better account for the shared and unique aspects of depression and anxiety in children need to be explored.     

Performance in auditory and visual emotional stroop tasks: a comparison of older and younger adults

Research has shown age-related declines in the cognitive ability to inhibit irrelevant information. Thirty-six younger adults (mean age = 22 years) and 36 older adults (mean age = 74 years) performed 2 versions of an emotional Stroop task. In one, they made lexical decisions to emotion words spoken in 1 of several tones of voice. Latencies were longer for test words spoken in an incongruent tone of voice, but only for older adults. In another, words were displayed on a computer screen in a colored font, and participants quickly named the font color. Latencies were longer for test words high on arousal, but only for older adults. Results are discussed in terms of inhibitory cognitive processes, attention, and theories of emotional development.     

The effect of target group size on risk judgments and comparative optimism: the more, the riskier

In 5 experiments, college students exhibited a group size effect on risk judgments. As the number of individuals in a target group increased, so did participants' judgments of the risk of the average member of the group for a variety of negative life events. This happened regardless of whether the stimuli consisted of photographs of real peers or stick-figure representations of peers. As a result, the degree to which participants exhibited comparative optimism (i.e., judged themselves to be at lower risk than their peers) also increased as the size of the comparison group increased. These results suggest that the typical comparative optimism effect reported so often in the literature might be, at least in part, a group size effect. Additional results include a group size effect on judgments of the likelihood that the average group member will experience positive and neutral events and a group size effect on perceptual judgments of the heights of stick figures. These latter results, in particular, support the existence of a simple, general cognitive mechanism that integrates stimulus numerosity into quantitative judgments about that stimulus.     

Being bad isn't always good: affective context moderates the attention bias toward negative information

Research has demonstrated that people automatically devote more attention to negative information than to positive information. The authors conducted 3 experiments to test whether this bias is attenuated by a person's affective context. Specifically, the authors primed participants with positive and negative information using traditional (e.g., subliminal semantic priming) and nontraditional (e.g., social interactions) means and measured the amount of attention they allocated to positive and negative information. With both event-related brain potentials (Experiment 1) and the Stroop task (Experiments 2 and 3), results suggest that the attention bias to negative information is attenuated or eliminated when positive constructs are made accessible. The implications of this result for other biases to negative information and for the self-reinforcing nature of emotional disorders are discussed.     

Learning of similar complex movement sequences: proactive and retroactive effects on learning

The authors used an interference paradigm to determine the extent to which the learning of 2 similar movement sequences influences the learning of each other. Participants (N=30) produced the sequences by moving a lever with their right arm and hand to sequentially presented target locations. They practiced 2 similar 16-element movement sequences (S1 and S2), 1 sequence on each of 2 consecutive days of practice. Control groups received only 1 day of practice on 1 of the sequences. Early in S2 practice, the experimental group demonstrated a relatively strong level of proactive facilitation arising from previous practice with S1. The advantage was not evident at the end of S2 practice or on the S2 retention test. No advantage of practicing the 1st sequence on the learning of the 2nd sequence (proactive effect) was found in the analysis of element duration in the retention and transfer tests, even though 14 of the 16 elements were common to both sequences. A strong retroactive interference on the switched elements was detected, however. Thus, the memories underpinning S1 seemed to be "overwritten" or adapted in response to the learning of S2.     

A unidimensional measure of Hong's psychological reactance scale

Research using Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale has been fraught with methodological concerns. Researchers have been unable to find a stable, a nd replicable factor structure. Here, results suggested t hat Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale is a unidimensional one with an average alpha of .74 (SD=.46). This value was attained by first analyzing correlation matrices reproduced from three reports on Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale and then verifying this new factor structure with original data. Tests for internal consistency supported a 1-factor solution. Tests for external consistency supported prior findings in relation to Psychological Reactance and offer evidence that the 1-factor solution is externally valid. While the authors contend that a 1-factor solution is appropriate, further testing is needed for external consistency and refinement of the measure.     

Response monitoring, the error-related negativity, and differences in social behavior in autism

Children with autism not only display social impairments but also significant individual differences in social development. Understanding the source of these differences, as well as the nature of social impairments, is important for improved diagnosis and treatments for these children. Current theory and research suggests that individual differences in response monitoring, a specific function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), may contribute to social-emotional and social-cognitive impairments and individual differences in autism. To examine this hypothesis, we used a modified flanker task to assess an ERP index of response monitoring, the error-related negativity (ERN), in a sample of higher function children with autism (HFA) and an IQ-matched control sample. The results revealed a significant Diagnostic group by Verbal IQ interaction on ERN amplitude indicating that the most verbally capable HFA children displayed significantly larger ERN amplitudes than did the control children. Within the HFA sample, greater ERN amplitude was also related to parent reports of fewer symptoms of social interaction impairments, fewer internalizing problems, but more externalizing problems, although these associations were reduced to nonsignificance when medication status was controlled. The latter results complement previous observations from imaging studies of a significant association between ACC activity and social symptoms and impairments in autism. The implications of these results for future research on brain-behavior relations, as well as treatment related research with children with autism are discussed.     

Females, but not males, show greater pupillary response to direct- than deviated-gaze faces

Under suitable conditions, pupillary dilation is a reliable index of processing activity. Pupil size was tracked in male and female observers following the presentation of face stimuli for an age-judgment task. The eyes on the faces were either directed towards the observer or deviated to the side. Pupil dilation accompanied processing of the faces, but female observers showed significantly more sustained pupil dilation when viewing direct- than deviated-gaze faces over the period 3 to 7 s after stimulus onset, regardless of stimulus sex. In contrast, male observers did not show a consistent pattern in response to either the gaze or sex of the face stimuli. These findings indicate a sex difference in the processing of gaze direction and suggest that females, but not males, apply increased effort to processing socially relevant (direct-gaze) than irrelevant (deviated-gaze) faces. They also demonstrate that pupillary measurement can potentially provide new insights into the processing of even visual input, provided reflexes are sufficiently controlled.     

Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye-tracking study

Recent studies have suggested that older individuals selectively forget negative information. However, findings on a positivity effect in the attention of older adults have been more mixed. In the current study, eye tracking was used to record visual fixation in nearly real-time to investigate whether older individuals show a positivity effect in their visual attention to emotional information. Young and old individuals (N = 64) viewed pairs of synthetic faces that included the same face in a nonemotional expression and in 1 of 4 emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, or fear). Gaze patterns were recorded as individuals viewed the face pairs. Older adults showed an attentional preference toward happy faces and away from angry ones; the only preference shown by young adults was toward afraid faces. The age groups were not different in overall cognitive functioning, suggesting that these attentional differences are specific and motivated rather than due to general cognitive change with age.